landscape, which meant it was sheltered from the worst of the wind. There was a view of a wood on one side, a hill to shelter behind on the other. A stream ran through the valley. Sometimes there were cows on the hill. The disappearance and reappearance of the cows was a mystery that Jackson spent more time dwelling on than a younger man might have.
He had been living here since the spring and liked it enough to think about making it more permanent. They got cut off when it snowed, a neighbour told him when he moved in, you could go days without seeing anyone. It seemed an inviting idea. (‘Reclusivity,’ Julia said. ‘I rest my case.’)
‘All right?’ Nathan asked, glancing briefly at him when he came into the living room, towel-drying his hair. This show of concern was heartening – they hadn’t raised a sociopath, after all.
‘Yes. Thanks,’ he replied.
Nathan was slouching on the sofa – on a chat site, by the look of it – while on the TV there was some kind of game show – complicated and moronic at the same time. (‘Like you, then,’ he heard Julia’s voice say in his head.) There were people dressed as animals – chickens, rabbits, squirrels, with oversized heads – running around while other people screamed encouragement at them.
‘Meanwhile in Aleppo,’ Jackson murmured.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ Jackson sighed.
‘It was cool,’ Nathan said, after a while.
‘What was?’
‘What you did today.’
‘Just another day at the office,’ Jackson said, although inside his heart swelled with pride. The son honoured the father.
Julia had neglected to have an opinion on crisps, so they shared a large bag of Kettle sweet chilli and sour cream, quite companionably, and watched the giant squirrels and rabbits chasing each other. It was a good day, Jackson thought, when you saved someone’s life. Even better when you didn’t lose your own.
Summer Season
Barclay Jack was in his dressing room, spading Rimmel foundation on to his face. He paused to gaze gloomily into the mirror. Did he look his age? (Fifty-eight.) Yes, he did, every minute of it and more. Barclay (real name Brian Smith) felt a drooping of the spirits. His stomach swooped around inside him. Stage fright? Or a dodgy curry?
There was a knock on the dressing-room door. It opened tentatively and Harry put his head round it. Barclay had been given an ‘assistant’ for the season, a volunteer, a school kid who wanted to ‘get into theatre’. Well, this isn’t the path, sunshine, Barclay thought. Harry. Harry Holroyd. It was the name for someone in silent comedies. Or an escape artist.
‘That’s your ten minutes, Mr Jack.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Yes, Mr Jack.’
Harry shut the door and hovered in the corridor. Next year he was applying to the University of Sunderland to do Film and Theatre Studies and so he thought of the Palace as a kind of work experience that would look good on his application form. It was certainly an experience – Harry only realized what a sheltered, naïve life he’d been living when he came to work here. ‘The Palace’ was a bit of a misnomer. It couldn’t have been less like a palace if it tried.
Bunny Hopps sashayed towards him along the narrow corridor, teetering on his colossal red sparkly heels. Honeybun Hopps – but everyone called him Bunny – was enormous, well over six foot and built like a rugby forward. ‘No relation to Lady Bunny,’ he said, rather mysteriously. ‘I’ve been Bunny since I was a bairn.’ His real name was Clive but his surname really was Hopps. He was billed as a ‘female impersonator’ – a description that seemed to infuriate him. ‘I’m not fucking Danny La Rue,’ he said to Harry. Harry had no idea who that was, but he’d found him – her – on an old TV programme called The Good Old Days. ‘It was a bit … weird,’ Harry reported to Bunny. ‘Aw, pet,’ Bunny said (he was a Geordie), ‘wait until you come across Fanny Cradock.’ The show at the Palace was an Eighties revival thing – a variety show that in its own weird way echoed The Good Old Days.
‘I’m a drag queen, for fuck’s sake,’ Bunny said. ‘Why haven’t they billed me as that?’ Out of curiosity, Harry had sought out RuPaul’s Drag Race and discovered that Bunny, despite his protestations, was quite an old-fashioned participant in the shape-shifting world of drag, more Lily Savage than RuPaul. Of course, his father, who took no interest in anything Harry watched, would